McConaughey and Harrelson Star in ‘True Detective,’ on HBO

True Detective Matthew McConaughey, left, and Woody Harrelson star in this series on HBO on Sunday.

Michele K. Short / HBO

By MIKE HALE

January 10, 2014

The success of HBO’s new Sunday night crime drama, “True Detective,” depends on two pairs of men, a couple of veterans and a couple of relative rookies. Upfront, and drawing all the attention, are the movie stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, playing a mismatched team of Louisiana state cops.

And if there’s a compelling reason to watch “True Detective,” they provide it, particularly Mr. McConaughey, who continues the recent winning streak he began with the 2011 film “The Lincoln Lawyer.” His contained, assured, watchful performance as Rust Cohle, a former narcotics detective from Texas whose cynicism and single-mindedness make him a pariah among his new colleagues, is a pleasure to watch. This remains true even when the material fails him, as it does with increasing frequency in the four episodes provided for review.

Which leads us to that second pair: Nic Pizzolatto, the show’s creator, who wrote all eight episodes, and Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed them.

“True Detective,” which has been announced as an anthology (next season: new story, new cast), was sold on the basis of Mr. Pizzolatto’s writing — two complete scripts and an outline of the season — and, in the pilot, you can understand what HBO thought it had. The relationship between Cohle and his new partner, Martin Hart (Mr. Harrelson), a glad-handing, philandering local officer who resents Cohle’s intellectualism but appreciates his investigative skills, is amusingly drawn.

And the framework of the season-long mystery, while nothing new — a woman is found ritualistically murdered; Cohle suspects a serial killer; no one but Hart believes him — is laid out economically and with a chilly, restrained mood of foreboding.

Mr. Pizzolatto adds texture to the story by telling it on two tracks: in 1995, when Cohle and Hart begin their investigation, and in 2012, when the case has been reopened, and both are being questioned by a second set of detectives. As the clues are gathered in the original case, we are given clues about what went wrong with it. This flashback structure, which could have been cumbersome and distracting, is impressively seamless.

The new HBO series “True Detective” is led by its creator and writer, Nic Pizzolatto, left, and the director Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Jim Bridges / HBO, via Associated Press

But, despite these positives, things start to go off track as early as the second episode, and you can’t help making a connection to Mr. Pizzolatto’s résumé. He’s a literature professor and novelist whose previous television experience consists of writing two episodes of “The Killing.” This seems relevant as the mystery becomes cursory, with leads and suspects popping up in arbitrary, nondramatic fashion, and the series reveals itself as a languid character study and a vehicle for long-winded exchanges about religion and responsibility that are writerly in the worst way.

Mr. McConaughey is saddled with most of Mr. Pizzolatto’s more egregious dialogue, and it’s to his credit that he can maintain Cohle’s credibility while delivering lines like “There’s a weight, and it’s got its fish hooks in your heart and your soul,” and “There was other times I thought I was mainlining the secret truth of the universe.”

As “True Detective” really starts to settle into an arty stasis in the third and fourth episodes, your focus might shift to Mr. Fukunaga, who’s working in TV for the first time after directing two feature films. He demonstrated a lot of talent in the excellent 2011 “Jane Eyre,” but, in that case, he was working with a fine, fast-paced, pared-down screenplay (by Moira Buffini). His other feature, “Sin Nombre,” which he wrote himself, had some of the same heavy-handed loginess that begins to envelop “True Detective,” and he doesn’t show much ability here to animate Mr. Pizzolatto’s dialogue-heavy encounters.

Say this for Mr. Fukunaga, though, as well as for Mr. McConaughey and Mr. Harrelson: There are some nice moments in the later episodes, and they’re the ones with the fewest words. Scenes of Hart trailing a suspect’s girlfriend to a backcountry rave; of Hart and Cohle silently moving around Cohle’s apartment as he prepares to go back undercover; and of a chaotic robbery that turns into a race riot are crisp, stylish and exciting.

It may be unfair to judge “True Detective” on the trend of its first half. It’s entirely possible that Mr. Pizzolatto wraps up the mystery in a satisfying way, and if the stars’ performances and the Louisiana locations can carry you through the first four episodes, four more hours isn’t such a big investment.

On the other hand, if it’s four more hours of Mr. McConaughey drawling lines like “This is what I mean when I’m talking about time, and death and futility,” then that’s an awfully long time.